"I can't tell you exactly," he replied, "until I go to the
instrument-room and take the angles, but I should say roughly about
seventy thousand miles. When we've finished we'll go and have coffee on
the upper deck, and then we shall see something of the glories of Space
as no human eyes have ever seen them before."
"Seventy thousand miles away from home already, and we only started a
couple of hours ago!" Zaidie found the idea a trifle terrifying, and
finished her meal almost in silence. When she got up she was not a
little disconcerted when the effort she made not only took her off her
chair but off her feet as well. She rose into the air nearly to the
surface of the table.
"Sakes!" she said, "this is getting quite a little embarrassing; I shall
be hitting my head against the roof next."
"Oh, you'll soon get used to it," he laughed, pulling her down on to her
feet by the skirt of her dress; "always remember to exert very little
strength in everything you do, and don't forget to do everything very
slowly."
When the coffee was made he carried the apparatus up into the
deck-chamber. Then he came back and said:
"You'd better wrap yourself up warmly. It's a good deal colder up there
than it is here."
When she reached the deck and took a first glance about her, Zaidie
seemed suddenly to lapse into a state of somnambulism.
The whole heavens above and around were strewn with thick clusters of
stars which she had never seen before. The stars she remembered seeing
from the earth were only pin-points in the darkness compared with the
myriads of blazing orbs which were now shooting their rays across the
black void of Space.
So many millions of new ones had come into view, that she looked in vain
for the familiar constellations. She saw only vast clusters of living
gems of every colour crowding the heavens on every side of her.
She walked slowly round the deck, gazing to right and left and above,
incapable for the moment either of thought or speech, but only of dumb
wonder, mingled with a dim sense of overwhelming awe. Presently she
craned her neck backwards and looked straight up to the zenith. A huge
silver crescent, supporting, as it were, a dim greenish-coloured body in
its arms, stretched overhead across nearly a sixth of the heavens.
Then Redgrave came to her side, took her in his arms, lifted her as if
she had been a little child, and laid her in a long, low deck-chair, so
that she could look at it without inconvenience.
The splendid crescent seemed to be growing visibly bigger, and as she
lay there in a trance of wonder and admiration she saw point after point
of dazzling white light flash out in the dark portions, and then begin
to send out rays as though they were gigantic volcanoes in full
eruption, and were pouring torrents of living fire from their blazing
craters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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